The Effects of Virtual Avatar Visibility on Pointing Interpretation by Observers in 3D Environments

Avatars are often used to provide representations of users in 3D environments, such as desktop games or VR applications. While full-body avatars are often sought to be used in applications, low visibility avatars (i.e., head and hands) are often used in a variety of contexts, either as intentional design choices, for simplicity in contexts where full-body avatars are not needed, or due to external limitations. Avatar style can also vary from more simplistic and abstract to highly realistic depending on application context and user choices. We present the results of two desktop experiments that examine avatar visibility, style, and observer view on accuracy in a pointing interpretation task. Significant effects of visibility were found, with effects varying between horizontal and vertical components of error, and error amounts not always worsening as a result of lowering visibility. Error due to avatar visibility was much smaller than error resulting from avatar style or observer view. Our findings suggest that humans are reasonably able to understand pointing gestures with a limited observable body.